Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation - People

People

The Northern Cheyenne were allies of the Lakota in the Black Hills War of 1876–77. As do most Native Americans, they have a special bond to the land. Numerous Cheyenne work as foresters, fire fighters. This is visible in traditional communities like Lame Deer and Birney and it also emphasized by the 2006 split vote on development coal and coalbed methane on the reservation.

A historical buffalo jump, burial sites of Indian chiefs, the site of Custer's last camp before the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the Cheyenne Indian Museum, Ten Bears Gallery, St. Labre Indian Catholic High School|St. Labre Indian School, and the Ashland Powwow are sites of special interest in the Ashland area.

The Northern Cheyenne are related to the Southern Cheyenne, who are located in Oklahoma. Following the Black Hills War and earlier conflicts in Colorado (see Sand Creek Massacre and Washita Massacre), the Northern Cheyenne were forcibly moved to Oklahoma and kept on lands of their southern relatives. Unable to acclimate swiftly to the heat of western Oklahoma (Indian Territory at the time), having to grow their food instead of hunting or gathering as were their ways and the general conditions of where they were held, the northerners quickly began dying. In desperation, a small band left the reservation and headed north in 1878, an odyssey that later inspired Mari Sandoz's novel, Cheyenne Autumn.

The Northern Cheyenne briefly settled around Fort Keogh (Miles City, Montana). In the early 1880s, many families began to migrate south to the Tongue River watershed area and established homesteads in the northern edge of the Powder River Basin, which they considered their natural home. The United States government established the Tongue River Indian Reservation, which consisted of 371,200 acres (1,502 km2) of land, under the executive order given by President Chester A. Arthur on November 16, 1884. The boundaries originally did not include the Cheyenne who had homesteaded further east near the Tongue River, therefore those people who had were helped by the St. Labre Catholic Mission. This changed though when on March 19, 1900, President William McKinley extended the reservation to the west bank of the Tongue River, for a total of 444,157 acres (1,797.44 km2). Those Cheyenne who had homesteaded east of the Tongue River were relocated to reservation lands west of the river.